"Yes?" the reporter asked. Kealty was watching from ten feet away.
"The court has settled another important constitutional issue here. In referring to President Ryan by both his name and the title of his office, the court has settled the succession question raised by former Vice President Kealty. Further, the court said that that order was vacated. Had Mr. Ryan not been the President, the order would have'been invalid and never legally binding, and the court could have stated that as well. Instead, the Court acted improperly on point, I believe, but properly in a procedural sense. Thank you. The Solicitor General and I have to get some paperwork done."
It wasn't often you shut reporters up. Shutting political figures up was harder still.
"Now, wait a minute!" Kealty shouted.
"You never were a very good lawyer, Ed," Martin said on his way past.
"I THINK HE'S right," Lorenz said. "Jesus, I sure hope he is."
CDC laboratories had been frantically at work since the beginning, studying how the virus survived in the open. Environmental chambers were set up with differing values of temperature and humidity, and different light-intensity levels, and the data, incomprehensibly, kept telling them the same thing. The disease that had to be spreading by aerosol—wasn't, or at most it was barely doing so. Its survival in the open, even under benign conditions, was measured in minutes.
"I wish I understood the warfare side of this a little better," Lorenz went on after a moment's thought.
"Two-two-three primary cases. That's all. If there were more, we'd know by now. Eighteen confirmed sites, four additional trade shows that generated no hits. Why eighteen and not the other four?" Alex wondered. "What if they did hit all twenty-two, but four didn't work?"
"On the basis of our experimental data, that's a real possibility, Alex." Lorenz was pulling on his pipe. "Our models now predict a total of eight thousand cases. We're going to get survivors, and the numbers on that will alter the model somewhat. This quarantine stuff has scared the shit out of people. You know, I don't think the travel ban really matters directly, but it scared people enough that they're not interacting enough to—"
"Doctor, that's the third good piece of news today," Alexandre breathed. The first had been the woman at Hopkins. The second was Pickett's analytical data. Now the third was Gus's lab work and the logical conclusion it led to. "John always said that bio-war was more psychological than real."
"John's a smart doc, Alex. So are you, my friend."
"Three days and we'll know."
"Agreed. Rattle some beads, Alex."
"You can reach me through Reed for the time being."
"I'm sleeping in the office, too."
"See ya." Alexandre punched off the speakerphone. Around him were six Army physicians, three from Walter Reed, three from USAMRIID. "Comments?" he asked them.
"Crazy situation," a major observed with an exhausted smile. "It's a psychological weapon, all right. Scares the hell out of everybody. But that works for us, too. And somebody goofed on the other side. I wonder how…?"
Alex thought about that for a moment. Then he lifted the phone and dialed Johns Hopkins. "This is Dr. Alexandre," he told the desk nurse on the medical floor. "I need to talk to Dr. Ryan, it's very important… okay, I'll hold." It took a few minutes. "Cathy? Alex here. I need to talk to your husband, and it's better if you're there, too…. It's damned important," he told her a moment later.
55 COMMENCEMENT
TWO HUNDRED FILES meant two hundred birth certificates, two hundred driver's licenses, houses or apartments, sets of credit cards, and all manner of other permutations to be checked out. It was inevitable that once such an investigation started, Special Agent Aref Raman would garner special attention from the three hundred FBI agents assigned to the case. But in fact every Secret Service employee who had regular access to the White House was on the immediate checklist. All across the country (the USSS draws personnel from as wide a field as any other government agency), agents did start with birth certificates and move on, also checking high-school yearbooks for graduation pictures to be compared with ID photos of all the agents. Three agents on the Detail turned out to be immigrants, some of whose exact personal details could not be easily checked. One was French-born, having come to America in his mother's arms. Another hailed from Mexico, having actually come illegally with her parents; she'd later legitimatized her status and distinguished herself as a genius with the Technical Security Division—and a ferociously patriotic member of the team. That left "Jeff Raman as an agent with some missing documentation, which was reasonably explained by his parents' reported refugee status.
In many ways, it was too easy. It was on his record that he'd been born in Iran and had come to America when his parents had fled the country with the fall of the Shah's regime. Every indicator since showed that he had fully adapted to his new country, even adopting a fanaticism for basketball that was a minor legend in the Service. He almost never lost a wager on a game, and it was a standing joke that professional gamblers consulted him on the line for an important game. He was always one to enjoy a beer with his colleagues. He'd developed an outstanding service reputation as a field agent. He was unmarried. That was not terribly unusual for a federal law enforcement officer. The Secret Service was especially tough on spouses who had to share their loved ones (mainly husbands) with a job far more unforgiving than the most demanding mistress— which made divorce more common than marriage. He'd been seen around with female company, but didn't talk about that much. Insofar as he had a private life, it was a quiet one. It was certain that he'd had no contacts at all with other Iranian-born citizens or aliens, that he was not the least bit religious, that he'd never once brought up Islam in a conversation, except to say, as he'd told the President once, that religion had caused his family so much grief that it was a subject he was just as happy to leave alone.
Inspector O'Day, back at work because Director Murray trusted him with the sensitive cases, was not the least bit impressed with this or any other story. He supervised the investigation. He assumed that the adversary, if he existed, would be an expert, and therefore the most plausible and consistent identity was to him only a potential cover to be examined. Better yet, there were no rules on this one. Agent Price had made that determination herself. He picked the local investigating team himself from Headquarters Division and the Washington Field Office. The best of them he assigned to Aref Raman, now, conveniently, in Pittsburgh.
His apartment in northwest D.C. was modest, but comfortable. It had a burglar alarm, but that was not a problem. The agents selected for the illegal breaking-and-entering included a technical wizard who, after defeating the locks in two minutes, recognized the control panel and punched in the maker's emergency code—he had them all memorized—to deactivate the system. This procedure had once been called a "black bag job," a term which had fallen by the wayside, though the function itself had not quite done so. Now the term "special operation" was used, which could mean anything one wanted it to.
The first two agents in the door called three more into the apartment after the break-in had been effected. They photographed the apartment first of all, looking for possible telltales: seemingly innocent or random objects which, if disturbed in any way, warned the occupant that someone had been inside. These could be devilishly hard things to detect and defeat, but all five of the agents were part of the FBI's Foreign Counterintelligence Division, both trained against and trained by professional spooks. «Shaking» the apartment would take hours of exquisitely tedious effort. They knew that at least five other teams were doing the same thing to other potential subjects.